Comments on: Whoa.

By: Michael Price

Michael Price — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 10:39:35 +0000

The claim of racism depends on Obama, a presidential candidate having written the bill, something that hasn’t happened in recent memory. What is the chances he ever READ the bill, let alone wrote it. Seriously some people should check their facts before claiming others are being thoughtless.

By: Michael Price

Michael Price — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 07:02:36 +0000

Gee I notice for all your outrage at “racism” you didn’t choose to include my comment that GallingGalla was being explictedly racist in her comments. Guess some belief in inequality is more equal than others.

By: GallingGalla

GallingGalla — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 23:44:24 +0000

Frau, I agree that if the chimp is supposed to be Obama then it’s clearly racist. I just don’t think the chimp is supposed to be anyone; it’s just a riff on the monkeys-on-typewriters meme and the recent shooting and the 1400-page stimulus. I read the cartoon before the post and those are the things that popped into my head – definitely nothing about Obama. Besides, shouldn’t a chimp in a political setting be a stand-in for Bush?

Oh, dear, MikeF. Yeah i guess because you are so Rational and Discompassionate (in other words, white, after all, we white folks can *afford* to be “Rational and Discompassionate”), *you* personally don’t see any racism in the cartoon. People of color are saying that the cartoon is racist, but you don’t need to listen to them, for you just *know* the cartoon isn’t. Even though you’ve never once been on the receiving end of racism.

i dunno. my being white, when a PoC says that something is racist, i figure my privilege is blinding me to it, so i tend to shut up and listen.

By: William

William — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 15:42:28 +0000

One cartoon like this, however seemingly obvious, might be a mistake. Two begins to form a pattern. Laurel at comment #22 posted another cartoon by the same cartoonist which she identified as “clearly drawing on and reinforcing the public perception of Obama as [the stimulus bill's] architect.” Maybe not a lot of people clicked through, but the image is Obama surrounded by a bunch of donkeys, flies, and mounds of shit with a reporter talking about a stink coming from Washington. Again, theres lots of places you can go from that, lots of images and connections. I can think of half a dozen decent defenses of the joke (just as I could with the chimp cartoon), but theres still a major stereotype one could easily and immediately draw from the cartoon: black people stink.

By: Natalia

Natalia — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 15:27:47 +0000

Agreed with Kristin – intent doesn’t matter. Even if you didn’t “intend” to stand on somebody’s neck, you still have to move your damn foot and apologize.

By: Thom

Thom — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 15:27:40 +0000

“I can’t believe people actually buy the claim that this cartoon has anything to do with the recent chimp-attack story. The cartoonist just decided to vaguely reference another, unrelated, news item in a cartoon about the stimulus bill? Give me a break.”

Actually, it is pretty much standard operating procedure for political cartoonists to use an unrelated news event to make comment on a current political issue. So, in and of itself, such a practice is not that outrageous.

But to put it simply, there is no excuse for the cartoon itself. Even if the initial conception did not strike the cartoonist as a problem, he should have been able to step back and see a problem. If not him, his editor should have said “Holy shit. We can’t print this guys.” I can’t buy the notion that no one saw this before going to print and did not bat an eyelash. They had to know it would be controversial and went ahead with it to make a splash. So, as people have pointed out, intent and context ends up being pretty meaningless.

By: FBM

FBM — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 04:37:42 +0000

I guess the New York Post said this but some of its employees are saying this.

By: Chris

Chris — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 03:28:56 +0000

“No, the good reverend did that all by himself.

I love all the posters who saw an ape and immediately thought “black dude.”

But it’s the cartoonist who is a racist. Right…”

Read the caption, dude. It says, “They’ll have to find someone else to write the stimulus bill.” Obama is the person most credited for the stimulus bill, even if he didn’t actually “write” it. It’s not a stretch of the imagination AT ALL to think the dead monkey is supposed to be Obama. It wouldn’t be a stretch if it were a dead hamster.

By: CassandraSays

CassandraSays — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 00:15:02 +0000

Um, Julian?
“If you turn the outrage up to 11 for dumb oversights, you don’t leave yourself anywhere to go rhetorically when confronted with the truly vile.”

You’re expecting them to get more vile than this? Seriously?

Also, as someone who actually works in journalism I would like to make the following point – editors are not stupid. Not this stupid, anyway. There’s no way in hell this was an oversight. It’s a dogwhistle, plain and simple.

By: Cara

Cara — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 22:20:54 +0000

Shorter CTD: I know you are, but what am I????